Kasi Yaathirai - 3

We have seen River Ganga yesterday. There is a famous event connected with this river. In a way, it is an event in which reverence, respect is displayed to the river. I have not come across such an event for a river on a daily basis in the evening just after sunset.

Can we draw a parallel between Colour (Flag) lowering ceremony by every Defence unit / Formation?

Can we connect the specific event which takes place at Wagah Border (Indo – Pak border), 22 km away from Amritsar?

Above events are one and the same with a minor difference being the flag in each case. In the former case, it would be the flag of the unit / formation and in the case of latter, it is Indian Tricolour. The similarity is in treatment of flag. With the tunes of last post in the background, the flag is lowered at a slow pace to match the composition of bugle music, then folded with great care and carried off with escorts in a most respectable way.

You will all agree to relate Ganga aarti to a Colour lowering ceremony after reading this blog.

“Ganga Aarti” started only in the mid 90s as a daily routine to pay respects to the river after sunset. People say Ganga Aarti is performed at Kasi & Haridwar daily in the evening after sun set.

Ganga aarti is performed at three ghats namely Dashaswamedha Ghat, Raja & Kedar. The number of pundits perform aarti in these ghats are 7, 3 & 3 respectively. Since the number of Pundits is more and the because of the bigger area of Dashaswamedha Ghat, huge crowd throng this particular ghat, though people gather in other two ghats as well. We watched this aarti from Dashaswamedha Ghat from a vantage point.

There are seven platforms erected, draped with Red Carpet for keeping all things related to Puja. All the pundits stand erect on the left side of Platform. There were some assistants positioned to help these pundits.

The aarti started with shank played by all 7 pundits facing the river, followed by Agarbathi, Sambirani, Adukku deepam, Karpooram and finally samaram. Entire sequence of activities were performed by all 7 pundits and the synchronization between these pundits was flawless, with a reverberating sound of udukkai, Jaalra, drum beats and chanting of mantras in the back ground. During entire sequence, the pundit turned at right angles to do aarti in all four directions (for each activity such as agarbathi, sambirani etc), and the timing of turn was impeccable. People also watched the aarti from river by positioning themselves in Boats. Everyone offered flowers, ghee with a wick, milk to river at the end of aarti, which were bought before the start of aarti from vendors. Whole atmosphere was charged up and reached its crescendo with the chants of Ganga Maiya ki Jai & Har Har Mahadev at the end.

The moment the aarti was over, the whole Ganga was lit up with floating deepams, and when we watched all deepams together, it was appearing like candle march. It was a magnificent sight to watch. The interesting thing was that we could see the Ganga aarti performed at two other Ghats. Another significant thing was that they ended at same time.....

The whole process of aarti lasted for one hour and we were left with a feeling of watching a ceremonial parade with precision, flawless timing, outstretched hands showing aarti. Ganga Aarti started at 6 PM and ended at 7 PM for about one hour

The grandeur, the tantalizing atmosphere, the breathtaking scenes, reverberations of this event made us to attend once more on next day evening…..

Kasi Yaathirai - 2

I hope my first issue on Kasi yesterday must have rekindled the memories for those who have visited the place and for those who have not visited must have started planning......

Here we go.......

We reached Kasi late in the late evening on 25 Dec 2005 we rested for the day.

A river is an important thing for any country and we in India associate it traditionally with our culture. We have been taught to treat the river as Goddess and mother. We address all our rivers by female names barring Brahma Putra being an exception.

A perennial river with its tradition and history dates back to Mahabharata and its name associated with name of the film, film songs, film dialogues and in every other possible way. No other river has claimed such popularity I believe. Yes…..I am referring to Ganga… Though I had the privilege of seeing Ganga at Kanpur, Ganga at Kasi has its own specialty in many ways.

I must mention here that Kasi is not a modern city. It is an old city still retaining century old buildings in every angle and shape, very narrow alleys with width being approximately 4 feet. Human beings in two wheelers or by walk share & congest these narrow alleys with cattle is a common site. Yet Kasi is inundated with tourists.

It is also believed that lakhs and lakhs of Shivalingams got buried underneath the surface of Kasi. Probably, for this reason the old local people do not use footwear to walk on the roads. Kasi is also known as Punya Karma bhoomi where even deaths are taken casually as any normal event and they consider it a big thing to get cremated in designated Ghats.

We started at 8 in the morning (in heavy foggy conditions) to Kedar Ghat which is very nearby from Vaishali’s Grandparents. We were dumbstruck at the sight of magnificent Ganga with its huge water mass flowing serenely, doing its duty day in and day out without expecting any benefits. We were ecstatic and thrilled to watch Ganga.

Initially we were hesitating to venture in water fearing it would be too cold because of winter. By seeing the crowd who were taking dips very casually, we got some confidence. After shedding clothes we were chattering literally. But the moment we took our first holy dip, we felt no cold at all even with temperature around 9 deg C . At this point I reasoned out that why river is being treated as mother. Everybody would have experienced in the childhood by being in the hands and lap of mother with her warm hugs. I had a similar experience and cannot describe beyond this in words. One has to experience this feeling. Though we never wanted to come out of the river as we were having an enchanting experience, we were to visit many places which forced us to come out of the river….

Some of the facts associated with Kasi are:

There are 64 Ghats. Out of these 64 ghats, cremation takes place only at Hari Chandra & Mani Karnika Ghats (“Mani” refers to bell and “Karnika” refers to the neck of Lord Shiva)

The alias name for Kasi is Varanasi which is derived from two rivers namely Varuna and Asi

The names of some of the notable Ghats are Kedar, Hari Chandra, Mani Karnika, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, Asi, Dashaswamedha, Prayag & Raja

The famous “Ganga Aarthi” takes place at three Ghats namely, Dashaswamedha, Raja & Kedar


I leave you all at this point to ponder with the thoughts of Ganga..….… Ganga Maiya (Amma) ki Jai